1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to refrigerators and, more particularly, to a refrigerator in which both a machine room and air cooling chambers, each having an evaporator, are placed at a top of a cabinet to enlarge storage space in the refrigerator.
2. Description of the Related Art
As is well known to those skilled in the art, a refrigerator is a machine that generates cool air with an evaporator and supplies the cool air into a storage compartment inside a cabinet, thus maintaining freshness of stored food for a desired lengthy period of time. In accordance with the recent trend of consumers preferring refrigerators having large storage capacities to small capacity refrigerators, the storage capacity of refrigerators has become increasingly large. An example of a refrigerator with a large storage capacity is a side-by-side style refrigerator, which is designed to place a refrigerator compartment and a freezer compartment side-by-side with each other, in consideration of food storage efficiency, food freshness-keeping efficiency, and a user's convenience while putting food in and taking food out of the two compartments.
In a conventional side-by-side style refrigerator, two storage compartments are placed side by side to form a refrigerator compartment and a freezer compartment, respectively. A refrigerator compartment door is hinged to an open front of the refrigerator compartment, and a freezer compartment door is hinged to an open front of the freezer compartment, so that the two compartments are independently closed and opened by the two doors. A plurality of racks and storage containers are provided on an inner surface of each of the two doors to increase the storage capacity of the refrigerator and freezer compartments. To supply cool air into the refrigerator compartment and the freezer compartment, each of the two compartments is provided, at an inner rear wall thereof, with an evaporator, a cool air circulation fan, and an air duct, forming an air path. A plurality of air suction ports and a plurality of air exhaust ports are formed at a front surface of the air duct. Defined at a rear portion of a lower section of the cabinet is a machine room which receives a condenser, a compressor, a cooling fan, etc.
But the conventional side-by-side style refrigerator is problematic. That is, in the side-by-side style refrigerator, the evaporator that produces cool air, and the cool air circulation fan that circulates the cool air, are provided at the rear portion of each of the refrigerator compartment and the freezer compartment. In addition, the machine room that receives the condenser, the compressor, the cooling fan, etc., is defined at the rear portion of the lower section of the cabinet. The conventional side-by-side style refrigerator thus undesirably reduces the storage capacity of both the refrigerator compartment and the freezer compartment.
Furthermore, conventional large capacity refrigerators, such as side-by-side style refrigerators, are tall, so that diminutive users typically prefer lower sections of the storage compartments to higher sections, when storing food in the compartments. But, as previously noted, the machine room is defined at the rear portion of the lower section of the cabinet, thus consuming lower spaces of the storage compartments, and reducing the storage capacity of the lower sections of the storage compartments, which are preferred by the diminutive users.